


a dream of bergamot & vanilla

by wrldwideh0pe



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: everyones hurting, hongjoong is missing, mingi jongho and san are nowhere to be found, san is injured and in the hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25141267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrldwideh0pe/pseuds/wrldwideh0pe
Summary: the story of eight boys searching for someone who disappeared in plain sight.
Kudos: 4





	a dream of bergamot & vanilla

**Author's Note:**

> this is for the ateez story contest! but i figured i would put it on here too because im kind of proud of it!!

a dream of bergamot and vanilla -

They always said that when you cry at night the stars might just shine a little brighter. They said if you just squint hard enough you might just see the dark side of the moon. But, that wasn’t true. Adults said. Look up at the stars in the night sky. But, the stars did not shine in the night sky that I was looking at and I continued to walk, looking down at the ground. My hands were tight, clammy in my jean pocket. My phone was gripped by my left hand. I took it out to check the time and the screen lit up to show me messages from Seonghwa: “Yeosang where are you?” “Call me.”

Wet, salty raindrops fell to the cold pavement as I shuffled down the middle of the road.  
No use walking on the sidewalk when there’s no cars on the road. I mused to myself. 

I’ve searched day after day for my brother. My friend. But I’m running out of time. He’d been gone for so long, I had started to wonder if it was even worth the nights like these; when I return home a blubbering mess after a day of hopeless searching. 

I wiped the tears from my eyes so maybe I might see better, and pulled out my phone with a thousand cracks in it. Clumsily, my fingers made their way over to Seonghwa’s number, and began a call. As soon as I heard him mutter a “hello?”

I answered. “Isn’t it over? Do we have any hope left? I can’t find any. The bracelet doesn’t instill hope in my heart anymore, it inspires dread.”

“Yeosang? What…? Where is your head? In the clouds? We have his bracelet, we can find him.” Seonghwa responded quickly. I threw my head back as I listened to him speak, staring up at the distant, starless sky

“And what else? The scent of a girl we don’t know? We have nothing.” My head now facing the rest of the road, lined with street lamps.

“We have nothing but Hongjoong needs us to try.” He was frustrated, I could tell, and had just woken up from his sleep by the sound of his groggy voice.

“Us?? There isn’t even an us anymore.” I replied, equally frustrated, and tightening my fists until my knuckles turned white. “Yunho ran off days ago, Mingi hasn’t even left his room since Hong just disappeared in front of him and San…”

“Stop. Just stop. If not with them then you, and Wooyoung and me. Wooyoung hasn’t given up yet, we can’t either. We’ll help Hongjoong ourselves.” Seonghwa said. “I’m done with this tonight. Please… Yeosang… get some sleep.”

The call ended, and I became alone under the starless sky again with no intention to get any sleep. My eyes glanced across the horizon, not really looking for anything in particular, but my mind, churning for some semblance of an idea of how to take another step forward.

The hospital.

San was taken there yesterday...jumped out of a car. They hadn’t let Seonghwa in to see him yet, but maybe, I thought, they might let me in.

Without so much as a blink of my own eye, I walked briskly back to where I came. The city was big. Bigger than the towns and villages that surrounded us. We never truly left the city, almost like we subconsciously knew never to cross the borders. The walk wouldn’t take me more than thirty minutes, and if I walked faster, maybe twenty-five. By then, I’d have come up with something to say to San.

What do you say to someone who did what he did?

‘Sick of life’ he said… Hongjoong is missing and he’s sick of life? We were all sick of life. 

My mind grew quiet, my face calm, as I walked quickly towards the hospital in town. The harsh lights of the streetlamps bore against my face as I got closer to town, and further, the hospital. And when I arrived, I saw the hospital glowed like an LED light bulb in a dark room. 

I told the receptionist I was here to see my brother, and she told me his room. This is too easy… my brain is lit up now with what to say, how to say it, why could Seonghwa not get in, why am I being let in? 

All these thoughts carried me up three flights of stairs and around four corners until I made it to his room. The door was cracked open, it was dark inside, half lit by the screen of a computer sitting next to the hospital bed. The curtains were only half drawn around San’s bed, his IV sat in his inner elbow, with a bag of some fluid being pumped into his weak body. His eyes opened, barely, seeing my figure in the doorway. 

I cleared my throat and whispered as I walked inside and took a seat next to his bed, “San…” 

He smiled weakly. “Yeosang… you came.” 

“Yeah, of course I did. I’m sorry it's so late.” I look around and notice that he’s alone in the room, the other bed empty and made neatly.

“That’s alright, what time is it?” San craned his neck toward the small digital clock on the wall to his left. “Ah… Yeosang, why are you up at this hour?”

“Thinking…” I muttered.

“Thinking?” San raised his eyes to meet my troubled ones. 

I paused, wondering if he’d think I was crazy. “About dreams. And Hongjoong.”

“Thinking about Hong is understandable.” He said softly, “but what about dreaming?”

“It’s something Mingi said, right after Hong disappeared.” I held my breath. “He said, ‘living without dreaming is a normal thing for a guy like me.’ He said he stopped dreaming a year or two before all of… this… happened.”

“He stopped dreaming...” San tilted his head with a look in his eyes; lost in contemplation. He wasn’t surprised to hear the idea, though. It was like he had heard it before.

“Yes…” I hesitated, studying San’s face for any sign of disbelief, before continuing. “And I spoke to Seonghwa about it. We both haven’t dreamt since a year or two before Hong disappeared…”

A silence.

“I haven’t dreamt either.” San spoke. His eyes became not so round, but serious like I’ve never seen before in him. We became silent again. His confession lingered in the air like humidity. Then dropped as if there had been no storm at all.

He changed the subject, shaking his head softly. “I smelled her scent. Did you know that?”

I looked at him quizzically.

“I smelled her scent right before I jumped out of the car. It was her, that’s how she got Hongjoong. It has to be.”

“What… how do you know?” His eyes had not yet returned to their puppy dog demeanor as they usually are. His fists were tight, his knuckles turning white as he spoke to me. His voice quivered with every second word.

“We know Yunho smelled her scent before he ran off. And now he’s gone too. Mingi was there when Hong was taken, and we haven’t seen him since because he is so gone from our world that he has locked himself in his room indefinitely. Remember a few months after Hongjoong went missing, when Jongho was the most determined one looking for him, and then when we were starting to piece together that first theory about her scent, he just stopped. Cold turkey. And now he’s... who knows where.” San’s heart rate on the monitor had sped up significantly. He paused, and took a few deep breaths to calm down, so the nurse wouldn’t come in and bother them; the beeping slowed until it was regular once more. “I’m right Yeosang. And you know it.”

I looked at him with a mild amount of dread in my eyes. “I do know it.” It made sense. It was right under our noses the whole time… how could we be so blind? “Get some rest San, I’m sorry for waking you up.”

“Be careful Yeosang. Please.” He pleaded, puppy dog eyes once more.

“I will. Goodnight.” I turned and walked away. Back through the four corners and down the three flights of stairs, out the LED light bulb hospital and under the light of the street lamps. When I neared my home, I pulled out my phone to call Seonghwa and quickly dialed his number.

He picked up not a moment later. “Yeosang?”  
“Seonghwa. I spoke to San.”

“What did he say? Why did he jump?” Seonghwa threw questions at me.

“He smelled her scent. It’s her Seonghwa, she’s the one who’s luring everyone to do bad things. And… she’s the reason we no longer dream.”

“That… makes sense.” I could hear Seonghwa shuffling around his room, probably pacing the floor covered in clothes and dirty socks. “But the part about dreams. Did you talk to San about that?”

“He told me he hasn’t dreamed since then either. But Seonghwa… I don’t remember much of anything before we stopped dreaming.”

The line was quiet, except for the sound of heavy breathing on both sides.

“Maybe a birthday here and there, a scuffed knee playing soccer, at most.” I continued. “But the rest is a blur.”

“You’re sure?” Seonghwa said quietly.

“I think… we can’t dream, because we’re in one.” My voice is quiet as I briefly glance around my surroundings to make sure no one is listening. The street is cold, and empty. The concrete cracked as usual, the street lamps as bright as usual, the moon silver in the distance. But no stars. “We’re in a dream.”

“I think you need to get some sleep Yeosang…” Seonghwa sighed. “I promise we can talk about this in the morning.” 

“Fine.” I said. I felt dejected; I knew my theory was right. “Goodnight Seonghwa.”

“Goodnight Yeosang.” He hung up.

I gazed at the sidewalk before me and began to walk. The air was so crisp, not humid at all, you could feel the world around you. The air smelled like bergamot and vanilla. A smell so familiar, yet so hard to place.

That smell…

My eyes shot open round as two little soccer balls. It was her smell.

I pulled out my phone to text Seonghwa. 

“I SMELL HER SCENT.” My fingers zipped across the cracked screen and as I hit send, the jagged glass cut a line into my finger. My phone dropped as quickly as I had pulled my hand away in pain.

I squatted down to pick up my phone. I examined it: a few more cracks now glittered the screen. I stood up, my head hanging low still until it raised at the last minute and saw what stood in front of me.

Two people. One all in white, the other in all black. The first wore a fencing helmet with silver studded spikes that took the place of a face that I might have recognized. Both stood with their weight on their hip; their arms were strong at their sides. So casual, yet the smell had become deafening. The other in all black wore a fedora, and a mask that covered his nose and mouth. His eyes pierced through my very soul and saw through every layer of skin. He held a chain with a small, golden hourglass at the very end. His gloved fingers held onto the hourglass like it was a precious stone.

“Who are you?” I whispered, shaking. The wind had stopped breathing life into the air. And the air was no longer crisp as it was only moments ago.

Their hands reached for each of their facial coverings, and pulled them off. Revealing one's head of dark grey hair and others messy blonde head.

These were heads I recognized. The smell had filled every one of the cavities in my body by then. That smell of bergamot and vanilla filled my lungs as I choked on one single thought.

They were both Hongjoong.

**Author's Note:**

> and thats the end:D please comment and tell me what you thought i love feedback it helps so muchhhh and thank you for reading!!! stan ateez and stream whatever ateez's title track is going to be at the end of the july!!!
> 
> stay crispy  
> sav


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